France Prešeren and Slovenian Romantik
France Prešeren was born in times of upheaval: the 18th century, which recorded several transcontinental wars, an intellectual confrontation between philosophers and Christians, and finally the great revolutions on the western and eastern Atlantic coasts, was entering its final month. Central Europe, over which the Holy Roman Empire stretched, was still a battlefield, as was Italy, where the French armies and the troops of the Habsburg monarchs clashed. The world was torn between constants and ruptures.
Prešeren was born on December 3, 1800 in the village of Vrba in the former Duchy of Carniola (then Austrian, now the Slovenian region of Gorenjska). The farmhouse where he was born was the center of his family's property, whose members were no longer trapped in classical feudal relations. From their ranks came several priests who helped with the schooling of their younger relatives.
Prešeren left his home at an early age. He was attending a school in the southern town of Reifnitz (now Ribnica) when his home region was conquered by Napoleon in the fall of 1809 and united into a new federation, the Illyrian Provinces. The future poet thus formed his personality under radically changed conditions: The previously Austrian administration and education system had been fundamentally reformed along the lines of the institutions in the French Empire.
When Prešeren came to Ljubljana in 1812, it was still the capital of the Illyrian provinces. In high school he was taught Italian by the poet Valentin Vodnik, an admirer of Napoleon. Prešeren then completed his university studies in Vienna. In March 1828 he was awarded a doctorate in law. At that time he was already writing verse, but published only one poem. He showed his early works to the linguist Jernej Kopitar, who was the greatest connoisseur of Slavonic studies in the capital. He advised the poet to leave his verses alone for a few years and then "polish" them.
After his return to Ljubljana, Prešeren became a trainee lawyer and then also a trainee court and financial administrator. However, not wanting to be dependent on the absolutist regime, he finally decided to become a freelance lawyer, but the authorities prevented him from practicing this profession independently until 1846. Allegedly for formal reasons, because he had not exactly shone at the advocate's examination in Klagenfurt in May 1832, but in fact due to prejudices of the state officials against his religious and political points of view.
When Prešeren entered the intellectual space of Slovene literature, it had already undergone a long development. At the time of the order of the estates, the first beginnings of a Slovene literature in the vernacular were already developing, while in aristocratic and bourgeois circles German and Italian had prevailed. Latin predominated in the church, but since the early Middle Ages priests addressed their audience in the vernacular. In the 16th century, Slovenian Protestants developed a complete religious literature of Reformation type: in 1584, a translation of the Holy Scriptures and a grammar of the Slovenian language appeared in Wittenberg. Later they added a dictionary. The Bible and the grammar were used even after the recatholicization.
The 18th century, which was characterized by energetic modernization in the Austrian Monarchy, revealed the problem of the language of instruction in elementary schools in all its breadth. Through the efforts of the national movement, the Slovene language became established in schools, which subsequently had an influence on literary creation and its reception. In the period from 1779 to 1781, the first poetry almanac in Slovenian appeared in Ljubljana, presenting readers with verses of baroque, rococo, classicist, and even pre-Romantic patterns. The enlighteners also tried to influence the common people with the help of theater, since it was aimed both at people who could read and write and at the still many illiterate people. At the transition from the 18th to the 19th century, the space for secular poetry in Slovenian was expanded by Valentin Vodnik, Urban Jarnik - one of his poems was even set to music in a German translation by Franz Schubert - and Goethe's admirer Janez Nepomuk Primic. Štefan Modrinjak, a priest who vacillated between the ideal of love and the reality of his work, should also be mentioned in this context.
A new generation of poets launched the poetry anthology Krajnska čbelica (The Carniolan Bee). Prešeren, who stood out particularly strongly within the framework of this almanac, treaded the path of European poetry of the time with his poetry, but did not forget the tradition of Slovenian folk and scholarly culture. Thus, he skillfully reworked the ballad about Lepa Vida (Beautiful Vida), which was marked by longing, while he found the material for his Povodni mož (Aquarius) in the work of the local polymath Janez Vajkard Valvasor, who was a member of the London Royal Society in Newton's time. Prešeren's poetological views were influenced by Italian sonnet writers, the Schlegel brothers, Lord Byron, and the creators of romantic and engaged poetry in France and Central Europe.
The poet transformed all these influences into something of his own, achieving an expression that enabled him to articulate his personal understanding of the world and human existence. In the eyes of his Slovenian, German, Czech and Russian contemporaries, Prešeren, who published his great national epic Krst pri Savici (Baptism on the Savica) in 1836 and the poetry collection Poezije (Poetries) in 1847, achieved great renown. When his poetic "Encyclopedia" appeared a year before the March Revolution, he was already an independent lawyer in Kranj. Metternich's absolutist regime gradually lost its former sharpness in its final phase and also granted critical people like Prešeren a little more space in public.
After the outbreak of the March Revolution, in which Prešeren took an active part, his hymn-like poem Zdravljica (Toast), whose printing had previously been prevented, was also able to see the light of day. The poem, in which the idea of Slovenian emancipation is linked with the vision of a worldwide brotherhood of nations and good people, became the Slovenian anthem at the end of the 20th century, set to music by the musically gifted priest Stanko Premrl.
When Prešeren died on February 8, 1849, he was considered a role model by many; the next generation of Slovenian literary figures already considered him unattainable in terms of his position in the domestic canon. His verses were translated by poets, professors and statesmen, and soon literary historians also began to deal with him. He also became a hero of literary works himself. The Slovenian writer Luiza Pesjak, who had been encouraged to write by Prešeren himself, was one of the first to do so. She tried to write a tragedy about Prešeren, who had once spurred her to follow Sappho's example with a sonnet in German, but she did not succeed in finishing it. Nevertheless, she went down in Slovenian literary history as a universal author: She penned not only the libretto for Anton Foerster's successful operetta Gorenjski slavček (Carniolan Nightingale), but also patriotic poetry and verses for the young, which showed several generations the way to the world of literature. Luiza Pesjak is also the author of the family novel Beatin dnevnik (Beata's Diary), which joined the stream of European family novels of the time. In fact, she continued in a number of literary genres the vocation that France Prešeren had once revealed to her.
